There are many recipes on the internet for zucchini cake as these vegetables tend to get out of hand in the garden and sometimes a real bruiser emerges that is either destined for the compost heap or a relative who lives in an apartment. Presented last week with one the size of a small baseball…

If you want to give your grilled meat or fish a flavour and textural contrast, serve it with a creamy skordalia. With cauliflowers in season now you can make a cauliflower skordalia or one with a mix of potato and cauliflower. Skordalia hails from Greece and at its most basic is the thick puree of…

Recently I made an Indian feast of basmati rice, rogan josh, vegetable curry, onion sambal and raita. While refreshing my spice stocks at the local Indian grocery store I also bought some papadums to complete the spread. On checking how best to deep fry them I discovered that you don’t have to; you can cook…

Seasonal vegetables, artichokes and Swiss chard, are perfect contenders for a quiche filling. This quiche requires a little vegetable preparation but the pastry I use makes this an easy, 30 minute baking step. Making quiches with shortcrust pastry can be a bit tricky as you generally have bake the pastry blind and then fill it…

Tomato passata time for many of Melbourne’s Italian community is a big family affair, where a day is set aside for processing boxes of ripe, end of season tomatoes into bottled tomato puree for use during the winter. Usually the suburban garage is set up for the day as a little cottage industry because the…